How to make a shape blinking or flashing over and over in Excel?

If you want to make a shape blinking over and over in a worksheet, a method in this article can help you.

Make a shape blinking over and over with VBA code

Make a shape blinking over and over with VBA code

In the worksheet, to make a shape blinking, please do as follows.

1. Press the Alt + F11 keys to open the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window.

2. In the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window, click Insert > Module. Then copy and paste VBA code into the Code window.

VBA code: Make a shape blinking over and over in worksheet

Dim NextTime As Date
Dim xColor As Long
Sub Flash()
    NextTime = Now + TimeValue("00:00:01")
    With ActiveSheet.Shapes("new").Fill.ForeColor
        If xColor = 0 Then
            xColor = .SchemeColor
        End If
         .SchemeColor = Int(Rnd() * 55 + 1)
    End With
    Application.OnTime NextTime, "Flash"
End Sub

Sub StopIt()
    Application.OnTime NextTime, "Flash", schedule:=False
    ActiveSheet.Shapes("new").Fill.ForeColor.SchemeColor = xColor
    xColor = 0
End Sub

Notes:

3. Press the Alt + Q keys together to exit the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window.

4. Insert a Button into the worksheet by clicking Developer > Insert > Button (Form Control) as below screenshot shown.

5. In the popping up Assign Macro dialog box, select Flash in the Macro name box, and then click the OK button.

6. Then change the display text on the button as you need. In this case, I change the display text to Start blinking as below screenshot shown.

7. Repeat the above step 4 and 5 to insert a new button and assign the StopIt macro to this button.

8. Change the display text of this new button.

Then you can see two buttons assigning with different macros are inserted into the worksheet. See screenshot:

From now on, when clicking on the Start blinking button, the shape starts blinking with different colors. If you want to stop the flash, please click the Stop blinking button.

Related article:

• How to blink or flash text of specified cell in Excel?